


Blighted

by FSTP



Category: Dead by Daylight (Video Game)
Genre: Blood and Gore, Body Horror, Canon-Typical "Death", Canon-Typical Violence, Explicit Language, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-19
Updated: 2020-07-19
Packaged: 2021-03-05 00:01:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,404
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25384957
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FSTP/pseuds/FSTP
Summary: The Blight is the one thing in the fog more dangerous for the killers than the survivors. Fortunately, it doesn’t happen often.Unfortunately, this time, it takes its toll on someone the Huntress has gotten attached to, leaving it to her to find a resolution.
Relationships: Anna | The Huntress/Evan MacMillan | The Trapper
Comments: 3
Kudos: 24





	Blighted

It was a colder night than ever when the forest went wrong. 

Anna was in her house, carefully cleaning and sharpening her axe, when she felt something shift outside. It wasn’t so much a sound as a sensation, some change in the air. She was no stranger to knowing the forest - when the birds stopped singing and the animals vanished, something was wrong, and it was only a matter of time before she found the reason. Travelers, usually. Soldiers. Intruders. 

But there were no birds to fall silent here, no animals to flee. What she felt was bone-deep. A knowledge that nobody would ever be able to put into words, much less her. 

She stepped outside and saw the flowers. Bright orange, glowing, for the moment still furled up tight but soon they’d grow strong enough to open. They grew out of strange black stalks from even stranger pustules that erupted from the ground, festering and spitting black spines out of every … pore, she supposed was the right word. 

They were wrong. They didn’t belong here. Not in her forest, where everything was cold and silent, still except for the wind. They were too bright and too unnatural, though in a certain way they were pretty, at least from a distance. Their glow made the forest eerie, and in trials, they sometimes cast light on the ones that chose to hide. But in the end, they _did not belong_. 

And she couldn’t do anything about them. Even as she watched, the petals on one started to split, and something leaked to the forest floor, hissing and staining it. It would heal in time, of course. But it frustrated her to see it. 

Philip had tried to explain it to her once, but she hadn’t really understood it, and she suspected he hadn’t fully understood what he was trying to explain. It had something to do with the Entity. It wasn’t a god, wasn’t a spirit, though neither were things she had ever much believed in, even as a child, so the idea that it might be a solid _thing_ wasn’t difficult for her to accept. He told her that sometimes, it got - and here he struggled with the right word, and could only come up with _sick_. Pent-up. Overloaded with something. It had to release whatever built up, like a boil coming up through the skin. 

The flowers bloomed, and oozed, and died, and faded. And then everything went back to normal. Why, she’d asked, when this thing was as much a god as any of them could imagine? And he’d sat in silence for a time before shrugging. 

_Some things are beyond our comprehension,_ he’d said, and she accepted that. 

But the flowers weren’t just unpleasant to look at up close. 

Anna watched it for a while. It shifted, seethed, looked like it was ready to open. She leaned back, automatically; half her instincts were telling her to smash it flat, and half were telling her to run. 

She didn’t touch it. She didn’t get much closer than she already was. She knew better than to take that risk. She still had scars from … _that time_ , when things had gone wrong. 

The flowers bloomed from time to time, with no warning and no hint of when they would erupt next, and while their prey never seemed too concerned about them, _they_ were constantly on their guard. Every one of them - nearly every one of them - knew what would happen if the stuff got on them. Or _in_ them. 

Oh, yes. There had been other survivors, once. And some of them had been more dangerous than anyone was prepared for. It was only luck, or maybe mercy, that none of their current prey had figured out how to do the same. 

Though she doubted the Entity understood _mercy_ any better than she did. 

For now, there was no reason to interfere; if there was one, there were others, and no matter how long she took trying to rip them all up there would always be more. It meant she’d have to stay away from the temple. They clustered around the stones there, a glowing garden in and around the long-abandoned halls, growing so thick it was impossible to even get into the temple without them catching and scratching and burning on everything they touched. It was unlucky for Adiris, but Anna was glad that they didn’t grow as heavily in her part of the forest. 

She took her axe and turned to head back inside. In the distance, she could see glints of orange between the trees, wreathed by fog and mist. All she had to do, she knew, was wait them out, and she tried to remind herself of that as she shut the door to the cabin behind her. 

But it grated on her, nonetheless. This was _her_ forest, even if it only existed because of the Entity’s will. Nothing had the right to trespass here unless she allowed it, and this _was_ a trespass, nearly as bad as a stray survivor looking for weapons or another killer she _did not like_ deciding to pay her a visit. Those, at least, could be resolved in a hurry. 

Although not every killer had earned her ire.  


* * *

  
  
A trial later the flowers had opened. They glowed, seethed, dripped their poisons to the forest floor and made her that much more careful about where she stepped. It felt to her like they were growing more heavily this time around, and that felt like an insult, or a punishment. Why? She did her work as well as any of the others. Better, in fact. She _hunted_ , while the others often took their time, dragged things out, and let their prey escape. Too dedicated to their own sense of self-satisfaction and pleasure to understand why they were _here_. 

But, like Philip had said, maybe it was just outside her understanding. A forest was a better place for a plant to grow than a dying swamp or a cold, manmade building or a snowy mountain or a land stripped of nearly everything by years of men’s interference. 

The last idea made her thoughts drift. If the flowers were going to get on her nerves here, then perhaps she should go somewhere else? Other places would have less to frustrate her, and maybe even something to make the passage of time until things returned to normal more bearable. Visiting Adiris wasn’t an option so long as the flowers kept blooming, so instead she stalked into the fog, avoiding another few flowers on the way. 

A feeling of heat. Of deep underground rumbling like the earth was about to split. _Rage_ , raw and unfettered and dangerous. _Stay out._ A warning. She felt for that dangerous combination among all the others - the husks of burned-out trees, the smell of the taste of ice forming on rotting wood, rage and grief twisted up like poison - and followed it. Even now the fog obeyed and opened for her. Maybe it worked on its own, separately from the Entity; maybe she just knew what she was doing. 

Cold moonlight cut the world into bars of light and dark, and the sky was such a dark blue she watched it for a while in silence. Her forest was always cloudy, the sky between the trees always gray; it was refreshing to see something else, sometimes. It reminded her of warm summer nights when she could sit outside her home with a little one resting at her side, listening to the insects and watching the night birds hunt their prey. 

But this place wasn’t her home, and it wasn’t warm, though by comparison it was almost balmy for her. Anna sighed and made her way through the forest, avoiding the flowers that didn’t grow so thickly, heading for the house she knew was at the center of everything. 

Wind rustled the dying leaves overhead. She stepped neatly around a trap, which took her in a slightly different direction, and it was only because of that little change that she noticed one of the flowers not too far away looking like it was dying. 

She made her way over to it and crouched down. Yes, it was dying … but none of the others were. It was too early for them to do so on their own. She pulled out a hatchet and used it to tilt the sunken head back up. The petals had blackened, the ooze had stopped dripping, even the pustules that grew on its base had deflated and flattened out. 

The front face of the flower looked as grim as ever, but something was off about it. She squinted at it, trying to remember what it _should_ have looked like. In the center it almost looked like it had been split, once or twice. Patches of sharp bristles crushed flat surrounded the spots that opened into the flower’s interior. They should have dripped glowing ooze, but didn’t. 

The prey sometimes left flowers looking like this, she remembered. She’d watched them crouch by the things, do … _something_ with them, both the flowers and their pustule-covered bases, and left them fallen and dying. Was there a survivor around here, she wondered? Had they grown so desperate for help - or perhaps just arrogant enough - that they would break into dangerous territory to get it? 

A sound cracked the air. A roar, guttural, low and dangerous and _loud_. Her head snapped around to pinpoint where it had come from, and then her brain caught up with her ears. 

It was the roar of a beast, or a monster. Something mad that would kill without a second thought. Something mad from rage and _pain_. And even as she heard it, she recognized it, mangled and distorted though it was. 

She knew that voice. It was Evan’s voice. _Her_ Evan. 

Anna was moving in an instant, silent and intent, following the sound to its source. As she got closer she could hear destruction. Trees being smashed, metal cracking stone, heavy footsteps tearing up the ground wherever they landed. More snarls, roars, the sounds of an animal trying to take out its fury on whatever it could reach. 

She could feel a pressure in her throat. It wasn’t fear - she feared nothing, and never had, and never would. She ignored it and slowed her walk, creeping through the trees as the sounds became louder, more persistent. There was breathing now, hard and nasty. 

In the shadows she saw movement. More than movement, she saw light. Orange light, searing, pulsing, worse than the flowers for how it stood out. She stopped by a wounded tree, stared at the damage done by what she knew was a blade, and finally turned to see what had done it. 

The orange light ran like veins through rough skin and scars, dripping in places, staining and burning whatever it touched. It festered on and around the spikes buried deep into skin. It split through clothes, splattered across the forest floor with every step. It had even burned part of the mask, gleaming light dripping from the eyeholes like molten metal. 

Anna got one good, long look at Evan, burned and glowing and insane, before he turned and roared into the forest again. It _was_ a roar, some distant, mostly-human part of her brain thought; it wasn’t a scream. He was too far gone for it to be something as human as a scream. 

He lashed out wildly with a blade as burned as he was. It split a young tree in half, sent leaves and branches raining down. She watched, partly a stalking predator, partly frozen to the spot in shock, as he ripped the blade out and attacked the tree with abandon until it was nothing but broken wood. Even then he kept going, kept fighting an enemy that couldn’t fight back. 

Finally there wasn’t even enough to hit, and he reeled back. She thought he was going after another tree but his hand came up, clawing at his back, at … one of the spikes, she thought, the ever-present metal that he’d told her was a combination of the Entity’s gifts to him and the last thing he did before he came to the fog. Blackened fingers scrabbled at it, trying to grab it, to pry it free, but couldn’t quite get hold of it, and he gave up with a snarl like a bear on its last legs. 

She stared at it. He never tried to take them out any other time. He simply … put up with them, as if their agony was part of his life, and maybe it was. She never tried to take them out, and once they’d stopped trying to kill each other, she never even laid a hand on them. Why would that change now? 

From the distance it looked like just another shard of metal, but when he jerked around to stagger off into the distance again, the moonlight caught on something that glinted. Shiny metal, not the dull, worn iron that normally made up the now-glowing spikes. Or maybe … glass? 

Anna followed him, silent as a shadow. She got close enough to see that, yes, one of them _was_ glass and metal, and not a spike at all. It looked familiar in a terrible way that made her palms itch. Oh yes, there had been a time when _someone_ had gotten around the Entity’s schemes, had trapped them one by one and used the flowers she’d learned to despise to corrupt them even further. Drive them mad with hate and pain. Make them uncontrollable, their minds broken from the Entity’s control but not in a way they could _use_. Madmen and madwomen, so insane they were almost fully human … 

And now whoever it was had come back. 

Anger was the blood that powered Evan, but Anna was no stranger to it. The sight of _her_ Evan insane somewhere far beyond his normal madness by the hands of someone neither of them could see or catch made the fury tear through her like a wildfire. 

She lunged out from between the trees with a yell. He turned sharply, faster than she’d anticipated, and brought his blade up in time to block her axe. The weapons met with a scream of metal and a shower of sparks, and she forced herself in as close as she could, to glare into the mask and see _what_ she was dealing with. Not who. 

The mask was cracked and broken, whole chunks splintered out of it, splattered with gleaming orange light. She could see where the light was dripping from the eyeholes, but it didn’t fill them - in them there was only darkness, and if she looked hard enough, close enough, she could see madness glaring back at her, eyes wild with hate and pain. Seeing not _her_ , but an enemy, something to crush and kill. 

She could hear him breathing hard and heavy, too, shuddering through agony and the shattered split of the mask’s mouth. It didn’t take her long to figure out that talking would get her nowhere. He wasn’t listening. He wasn’t _himself_ enough to do any listening. Ending this as hard and fast as possible was the only way to go. 

Evan had always been stronger than her, and with the power of the serum running through him, that was doubled. He shoved back against her and her feet slid across dead grass and dry dirt. It couldn’t be a direct fight, her against him. He’d smash her axe away and cut her down. She had to be smart to take him down, like he was prey that had stalked her as long as she’d stalked him, who had learned to get around her. 

Some beasts were nearly as cunning as men. She’d hunted plenty who had avoided her, scenting her on the breeze no matter how many furs she wore or what kind of filth she’d rolled in to hide the humanity that still clung to her like a veil, seeing her in the furze and brush and trees, tracking her invisible footprints as easily as she’d tracked theirs. They had required different tactics to find and kill, and once she had, she’d used their fur and bones to keep her alive, instead of simply to survive with. Their strength became her strength, and broadened her knowledge, and gave her that much more skill. 

The maddened bear in front of her would kill her with one swipe if she wasn’t careful. Anna snarled like a beast right back at him and kicked at a knee. She felt it hit home, but he barely flinched; his mask shifted a fraction of an inch, like he wanted to see what had been stupid enough to aim that low. It wasn’t much, but she had to take it, and ducked out from under his blade while he bore down on her. 

He fell forward, but didn’t drop. An empty hand swept out to snag at her arm. She dodged it, but splatters of orange flew off and hit her skin; the burn was instant, sharp, made her hiss and pull further away. 

The blade swung toward her. She leapt back, avoiding it; the swipes were inexpert, driven by instinct and not thought or planning or anything more than the urge to see her guts spilling on the ground. It made them easy to dodge, but more dangerous than normal. One wrong move and she’d have lost this fight in a terribly _final_ way. Yes, she’d come back, but probably without her axe and maybe with a whole new mindset as the gleaming serum coursed through her veins. But … no. The fool responsible for this couldn’t be watching nearby. 

Could they? 

It wasn’t a consideration she could think on for long. It flickered through her mind in a fraction of a second, and then she was back in the moment, dodging a swipe, ducking under a tree branch, grabbing the end of it and pulling it back only to let go. The whole thing snapped forward and struck Evan in the face, bouncing off the mask and stopping him long enough for her to put more distance between them. He slashed at the branch, tore it off the tree, and kept coming. 

If he killed her, she’d come back. It was a fact that had infuriated and frustrated her in the fog more often than it hadn’t: that death here _did not stay_ , could not keep a grasp on the people that should have been its victims. She could kill her prey a thousand times and they’d still keep coming back. She could gut intruders to her territory, leave them in pieces around the forest, and by the time the next trial began they’d be whole again, begrudging her the act. 

True, it let her learn new ways to hunt, to truly understand her prey, and though she hadn’t died often herself she knew better than to be angry with the ability to come back as if it had never happened while knowing what to avoid next time. But it took something away from the hunt. She could slake her bloodlust forever, and yet somehow, it was never quite the same as it had been. 

But now she was seeing a benefit to it she never had before: she could take Evan apart to stop him from coming after her and resolve this problem in a matter of seconds. She had to keep him from killing her long enough to get the glass from his back, and then keep him down until the serum had run its course. And while he might rage against her for that, in time, he would understand. 

Or so she hoped. 

All his intellect, all his cunning, was wiped away in a constant rush of rage. Anna used that, and lured him back, further and further into the forest. He didn’t run, but he did charge, and he wasn’t looking where he was going. She knew his forest almost as well as her own by now. She knew where he laid his traps - not what spots specifically, because he moved them regularly, but what places he looked for when he set them. There were obvious ones as warnings, and hidden ones as real dangers. In shadows and between stones, the metal hidden in tall grasses and under dead leaves. 

She’d passed several on her way to him. There _would_ be one behind her soon. She kept her steps light and grazing the ground, her feet feeling for cold metal instead of cool dirt. His blade swung past her face, making her leap back and nearly hit one dead on, but she didn’t look down. Didn’t turn away from him. Only shifted to the side slightly, trying to draw him forward. 

Normally, even touching his traps got his attention. This time the serum had his attention so intensely focused on killing her he wasn’t even looking down himself. 

He stepped in the trap; it snapped shut, and he roared again, in the sudden pain of it and what had to be a fury that came from something even the serum couldn’t smother. How many times had he raged to her about survivors tricking him into his own traps, after all? But instead of crouching down to undo it and free himself like he normally would have, he smashed at it with his cleaver. The first hit bent the jaws out of shape. 

It would only give her a few seconds. Anna darted around behind him and snatched at the glass. It didn’t come out immediately, but it got his attention, even over the trap. She heard him snarl like a beast and reach his free hand back to try and grab at her. 

She snarled in turn and wrenched at the glass. It wouldn’t give way. She shifted away from his grip and the glass turned, and _then_ it came free, unlocked from its position. Serum spilled from the sudden wound as she stumbled back; the sound he made wasn’t human, and it wasn’t animal, either. 

But that was the worst of it done. Now, she only had to keep him down. In one move she smashed the glass against the nearest tree, took her axe in both hands, and swung it up toward his back. 

He managed to free himself from the trap in time for the blade to catch him at the ribs and tear him open. Blood, stained with black and flickering with glints of orange, poured out of the fresh wound. He turned, reeling, swinging his blade wildly; she twisted the axe and brought it down again. It smashed against the blade that came up just in time to meet it. 

But the shock and the fresh pain had him off-balance. She couldn’t tear him open, but he staggered, fell back, tried to put his weight on his injured leg and started to collapse. Anna smashed the backside of the axehead against his cleaver, and he went down. 

It wouldn’t be for long. She didn’t even hesitate; the instant he was on his back she brought her axe down into his chest. Bones smashed and splintered under the strength of every blow. Organs ruptured, blood splashed with every hit. He tried to attack again, force himself up and block a few blows, but she had the longer weapon; there wasn’t much he could do to protect himself. 

When she finally pulled her axe back, panting, most of his chest was nothing but a mess of blood and bone. _Still_ he was trying to get up, but he wasn’t going to; she was sure of it. He was trying to make some kind of sound, another snarl, another roar; all she heard was choking and the bubbling of blood as it poured out from the edges of his mask. 

There was no guilt. No remorse. Not even pity, really. This wasn’t Evan, after all, hers or otherwise; this was a monster, a beast driven mad, and the only mercy it deserved was to be put down. He’d understand, or they’d fight it out again. At least she could depend on him being half-rational in that. 

The wounds were starting to heal. She watched for a while, but when he tried to push himself up she brought the axe down again. 

Anna didn’t have much use for the concepts of time that most of the others used. Minutes and hours didn’t tell her anything. She judged the passage of time by the movements of the sun and moon, or how much a fire had banked, or the movements of the animals in her forest. She only used the concept of days to break apart one sunrise to the next. 

Here, that was more difficult to do, because the sun never rose and the moon moved at uneven speeds. The fires could bank, but only when she was around; she could light one, go to a trial, and come back to see it still cheerfully burning when it should have been sinking low into the embers. She’d had to adapt. Judging by how long it took wounds to heal was an option, but even then, the Entity ensured things were never consistent. 

Still, as she watched, she could tell things were moving about as normally as they ever did. Bones pulled themselves back into place, muscles and tendons knit back together, skin regrew where she’d split it with ease. And after a few more hits, Evan stopped trying to get up again, so she could stand back and watch the gleams of orange light instead. 

They were draining, slowly. Fading, crawling back up his body instead of spreading out further. The scattered spots faded like stars going out. The stuff burning into his mask turned into nothing more than black streaks of smoldering bone. She saw smoke curl out from underneath him, where some of it was burning the grass as it drained. 

She waited until she couldn’t see so much as a speck of light anymore, and until his chest looked slightly more normal, before approaching him again. He was still gripping the cleaver like grim death, but she was able to pry his fingers off the hilt and pull it free, which meant he was unconscious; nobody took his weapon from him while he was still awake to know about it. She stuck it in her hatchet belt and, more confidently now, rolled him over partway. 

There was a little light left on his back, near where the glass had jutted out from. As she watched it dripped away and hissed on the already-burned grass below. 

Thoughts flickered through her mind about what to do next. Leave him here? He’d recover in time, and she could find him later, tell him what she’d done. But he’d be … vulnerable, she supposed, though the idea that Evan could ever be _vulnerable_ almost made her laugh out loud. Still, not all the killers understood the idea of being at peace with each other; if he was unconscious, they might try to make his life even more miserable than it already was. Stay with him? But if their invisible attacker who’d caused all this was still around, she might be the next one struck by the serum. And he might attack Evan again, too, leaving them _both_ crazed and single-minded. 

Anna let him drop back again and looked out at the forest. A gentle wind blew some leaves down into the path of destruction their fight had left. 

After a few moments she grabbed his arm and pulled it over her shoulders, then heaved him up as she stood. She’d lifted bigger animals than him before; the weight of all his strength was hardly the most she’d ever managed. 

Still, it was an awkward walk back toward his home. She couldn’t be silent. Had to drag him around to avoid the traps that had until a moment ago been so useful. A few of the razor-edged spikes on his arm kept digging into her shoulder, just hard enough to draw blood. And while his weight wasn’t the heaviest she’d carried, it was more than their constant prey, and it had been a long time since she’d really, truly _hunted_. The drag made the trek a struggle. 

Toward the huge, looming, manmade manor that stuck out of the forest like a sore thumb, past more hidden traps meant to dissuade intruders, up the steps of the sprawling porch and through the main door, which she opened with a kick that smashed the lock. From there, she paused, unsure where to go next. She’d never been _inside_ his house before, only around it. She didn’t see a bed anywhere, only dusty or molding furniture in places, and of course the fireplace that, for now, was unlit. 

There was a flight of stairs through a doorway, though. It was too narrow for her to carry him up, so she dropped him at the foot to get her hands under his shoulders and drag him up instead. 

Finally she found an unlocked door that led into a dusty room with a bed that looked almost normal. It was big enough for two, so she had little trouble dragging him up onto it and settling him so he’d have a chance to recover. 

And … that was all she could do, she supposed. She took his cleaver out of her belt and set it on the floor, then leaned her own axe against the wall nearby. Leaving to go back to her own territory didn’t seem particularly appealing just yet. The flowers were still blooming, after all, and a part of her didn’t want to leave him alone like this. She’d wait, she decided, until he woke up. Once he had his senses back, she’d decide what to do next. 

Anna settled down on the empty side of the bed, sinking slightly into the surprising comfort. 

After a while, she started to hum.  


* * *

  
  
She didn’t know what woke him up - her humming, the passage of time, the echo of pain that still had to be tearing through him - but eventually he did, groaning as the world came back into focus. She watched him in silence as a hand came up and grabbed at his head, fingers curling against first his skull and then the broken remains of his mask. 

After a few seconds he turned his head to see her. He didn’t speak right away, instead probably thinking to himself about why she might be here, and why _he_ might be here. She doubted he’d been resting when he was attacked. 

“What the hell happened?” he asked, his voice rough and cracked. 

“You were struck by the blight serum,” she said. She’d had time to think about this much, at least, and the memory of how Herman had explained it after their first terrible experience with it had come back to her. 

“How?” 

“I do not know.” 

“Why’s it feel like something broke my ribs?” 

“I did.” 

Slowly, his hand moved from his head to his chest. It had healed, but doubtless the pain still lingered, and besides that, the leather overalls he wore were still shredded nearly to the waist. She couldn’t quite read his expression through the mask, but she knew he was going to ask her _why_. 

“You were mad. It had taken you over completely. I had to stop you until it ran out. Killing you seemed the quickest way.” 

Evan didn’t respond right away. He looked away from her, toward the empty far wall of the room. She left him to his thoughts. Surprisingly, he hadn’t flown into a rage at what she’d told him. The last time, even though she hadn’t dealt with him personally, he’d raged to her about the audacity of it, the insanity, the fact that _anyone_ could get around the Entity to do this to them. He’d been dead certain about that last part. 

“Figures,” he grumbled, tugging at the ruined leather. 

“You aren’t angry?” 

“About killing me? No. Would’ve expected nothing less. Was probably the only way to stop it getting worse.” 

Anna let out a breath she didn’t know she was holding. He reached up again and felt the contours of his mask. 

“You did this?” he asked, without judgment. 

“No.” She watched his fingers feel every jagged edge, the burned-out places, the sharp splinters where there had once been smooth bone. “It was like that when I found you.” 

For a second he tensed. Then he ripped the mask off his face and hurled it at the far wall. 

Anna’s eyes never left him. 

He’d never taken off his mask in her presence before - though in fairness, neither had she. He’d pushed it up occasionally so the lower half of his face was visible, and she could see the familiar marks of it now: the burns, the soot, the scar that split his chin up through his lip. But the rest was new. 

She wasn’t the best judge of it, but he was handsome - or at least, he’d been handsome once, and hints of it still remained even through the wearing and roughness of years and pain. There were more scars, and more burns, not all of them gifts from their dark benefactor; his nose had been broken at some point, and set, but badly. He looked like a man who’d dealt with hard work his whole life and let it build him up. And, from what she knew, that was roughly the truth. 

Evan gripped the bridge of his nose and shut his eyes with a sigh. She glanced away then, to where the mask had landed. The force of the throw had split it down the middle. 

“Perhaps the Entity will fix it,” she said. 

“Doesn’t matter,” he replied. “I can make another one.” 

She watched him again, drawn without thinking to the sight of a face she wondered if she’d ever see again. His eyes were sunken somewhat in his face, possibly by nature, possibly from exhaustion. Her fingers itched to reach out and touch him, the same way she sometimes felt about sleeping beasts when she’d followed them to their caves. But for once, she suppressed the impulse. 

“ _Damn_.” He opened his eyes and glared at the wall, the broken mask. His other hand came up and felt around at his clothes, whatever parts weren’t ruined, for pockets. As she watched, he pulled out a keyring and ran rough fingers over the edges of the keys. 

She tilted her head and watched him in silence, until he suddenly offered the ring to her, one key picked out from among the rest. Some were thick burnished iron, and some were surprisingly delicate-looking, but the one he gave her had a twist to it she recognized. 

“Take it,” he said, and she could hear the pain just barely held in check in his voice. “Unlocks the workshop. There’s more masks in there.” 

Anna took the keys. Like his face and the inside of his house, she’d never seen the inside of his workshop, either - at least, not directly. She’d seen glimpses of it before when trying to take down the door to get back what was rightfully hers, but otherwise, it was a locked world to her - and to everyone else. 

Without a word she slid off the bed and found her way to the door that led to the workshop. It was an old door, and bloody, and warm when she put her hand to it. Past it, once she’d unlocked the door - with a little difficulty, since the only locks she’d ever bothered with were sliding ones - she followed the stairs down into a dark, orange gloom that radiated heat. 

It was a large room, or series of rooms with the walls knocked away to join them together, but the cramped piles of forgotten boxes and other things along with the low ceiling made it feel small. A big part of it was taken up by a forge, the source of all the heat; she peered at it cautiously, watching the dull glow of coals inside. They were the only source of light in the room. 

Nearby there was a worn anvil, and a pile of broken metal. She turned to look at the walls, where there were all sorts of traps and tools hanging up. Other weapons, too, blades more warped and dangerous-looking than the cleaver he normally carried. A few workbenches were pushed up against walls, but only one was actually clear. The rest were covered with … _things_. She couldn’t identify most of them. Oddly-shaped sharpening stones, tools she didn’t recognize, bottles of strange liquids that, on further inspection, stank to all hell. 

And there were masks. Not very many, but they were there, hung up on one of the less-lit walls without much ceremony. Some heavily stained, some burned almost black, some that barely hid his face for the broken pieces in them. 

She pulled one down with a split in it that ran from the mouth nearly to the top of the mask. The opening was lined with bone spikes like teeth, at once similar to and so different from the mask she saw him wear the rest of the time. She ran a thumb over the bloody stain that lined the split, feeling nothing come off or flake away, and glanced up at the others again. 

When she stepped back into the bedroom it was to see Evan rip one of the iron spikes out of his arm and fling it at the far wall. From the blood on his hand and back and the bed, he’d been doing it for a while. She almost questioned it, but a glance at the pile of them across the room made her stay silent. They were warped, after all, twisted by the burn of the serum. They weren’t the ones he put up with every day. The only ones left in him were the hooks that ran all the way through his shoulder, and from the look of things, they were only still there because he’d given up trying to get them out. 

He took the mask from her in silence, glanced at it for a second and, to her surprise, huffed out a breath that sounded amused. 

“This one, huh,” he said, turning it over and pulling the straps taut. 

“Is it special?” 

“Not really.” He slid it onto his face and pulled the straps over the back, grunting in pain as the movement pulled at the fresh wounds on his back and shoulders. “Was the first one I made when I got here.” 

“Why the change?” she asked, sitting down on the bed again. 

“Didn’t leave enough to the imagination.” 

And he was right; once it was on, despite the shadows, she could see part of his face clearly when he turned to her. The burns, the sootmarks on his skin, and one eye. This close she could see it was a faded gray-blue. 

“They would think you too human,” she said. 

“Enough to fuck with things.” He reached over and pulled out the last spike with a snarl of pain. It came out slowly, ripping muscles and skin, splattering blood on an already-bloody arm. He glared at it once it was in his hand, then caught sight of her expression. “These might still have that shit in ‘em,” he explained. “They’ll come back later.” 

She glanced at his back. The wounds there were healing, but already she could see black spots around the torn skin. 

“Why?” 

“We all pay our dues one way or another,” he said, dry and bitter. 

The spike joined the others on the floor across the room. She watched them for a while, until he was finished. Her mind was back on the fight, on the rage, the insanity, the clear and present agony she’d been able to see in every furious movement. She remembered her own brief brush with it, if faintly. It left her ill at ease. 

Evan leaned back against the headboard with a long sigh. Suddenly she felt his fingers on her wrist, pulling her arm back. She almost yanked away, but when she saw it was him - as if it would have been anybody else - she relaxed. 

“You got burned,” he pointed out. Anna glanced down, and - yes, she had, the splattered orange light flinging from him to her, leaving marks that had blackened on her arm. She’d completely forgotten about it until now. 

“It doesn’t hurt.” 

“Got salve if you need it.” 

“Perhaps later.” 

His hand was warm around her wrist, his thumb just brushing one of the burns. He wasn’t a man for anything gentle, she knew. She’d seen him fight. She’d heard the stories of his trials, of what he did to survivors who strayed into his territory. It would have taken him no effort to crush her wrist even now. 

He didn’t. 

He never had.  


* * *

  
  
The flower had collapsed by the time they got out to it. There was nothing left but a pile of ash and melting ooze; there wasn’t even a fleck of orange light left to it. 

Others were starting to wilt, too. It was a slow process, one Anna would have watched with satisfaction if she wasn’t occupied. 

The two of them had gone looking for the flower she’d found on her way in, the one drained of its light and left to wither early. Now Evan crouched by the remains and prodded them with the tip of his cleaver. There was nothing dangerous about it now. The slick black mess slid off his blade like rainwater. 

“So someone’s still doing this shit,” he said, eying the black gleam left on his cleaver for a moment before flicking it off dismissively. “I thought they knew better.” 

“Which of them did it?” she asked, knowing there wasn’t really an answer. They’d never caught whoever was responsible the first time around. It had suggested someone capable of getting around the Entity - or that the Entity was complicit. She wasn’t certain which was worse. 

“Don’t know. Didn’t see who attacked me.” Evan glanced around at the other, wilting flowers. “Probably wasn’t one of the maggots. Can’t see any of them being smart enough to pull that off, or dumb enough to go after _me_.” 

“Perhaps the original fool.” 

“Figured they were dead.” He pushed himself up. “Better let the rest know.” 

Anna watched him, only half-listening. The hunks of metal in his shoulder and arm had already returned, looking exactly the way they always did; even the hooks he hadn’t been able to remove, the ones lodged through him, had gone back to normal. He’d barely said a word about it. She wondered, not for the first time, just how much they hurt. 

The Entity had no room for mercy for their prey - and none for any of them, either. 

“I’ll tell Philip. He’ll get the word out.” Evan turned to look at her. Anna refocused on him, on the split in the mask where she could see the shadow of his face. “Tell Adiris and … what’s her name, in the swamp. They listen to you.” 

“Because I listen first.” She smiled slightly. “If I find they’ve been attacked, I will find you.” 

For a moment they were both silent: Evan kicking dirt onto the ooze that had once been a monstrous flower, Anna watching the scars on his back. Something gnawed at the edges of her mind. 

“I want to ask you something,” she said eventually. 

“Shoot.” 

“If you found me in the same state as you were … if I attacked you with no thought for anything other than killing you to sate madness … what would you do?” 

He stopped and stared out into the forest in silence for a while. She watched him carefully, her grip on the axe just firm enough that she could drive it down into him if she didn’t like the answer she got. 

“Cut your legs off at the knees and beat your skull in until you stopped,” he finally answered. “Figure out what started it and make sure it didn’t come back around again.” 

Anna smiled, and loosened her grip. 

“Good,” she said. “I will hold you to that.”


End file.
